I thought this was an excellent article, particularly the point about how and (possibly) why the CDC advised against the use of face masks to limit spread of infection during a pandemic. There seems to have been other failings of expert advice in the early days of the pandemic (e.g. see the UK government's apparent change of strategy early on) and they do to me look like failures in academic reasoning, rather than failures of political decision making. Will be interesting to read the findings of the inevitable inquiries after the dust has settled.